BRUSSELS: The Confederation of European Community Cigarette Manufacturers (CECCM), the largest tobacco industry Association in Europe, has today declared the plain packaging experiment for tobacco products a failure.
Speaking on the 5th anniversary of the Australian Tobacco Plain Packaging Act, Alisdair Gray, Secretary General of CECCM said: “There is no reliable or robust evidence that shows that plain packaging is contributing to improving public health. It has not reduced smoking prevalence or uptake by young people”.
“If anything, evidence shows that the main reasons for adolescents to smoke are sensation-seeking, peer and family-influence, not packaging¹.
In France, where plain packaging has been in force since 1 January 2017, data published by the public authority OFDT² indicates that tobacco products shipped to retailers have remained largely identical for the first nine months of 2017 (year on year).
Gray added: “The data clearly demonstrates that the introduction of plain packaging, even in combination with the Tobacco Products Directive, has failed to reduce sales of tobacco wherever it has been introduced”.
ENDS
